November 19, 2003

David Shaw, media critic for the Los Angeles Times apparently believes that Americans are idiots being continuely fooled by Fox News. In an interview with JournalismJobs.com comments on the proposed development of a left-wing news service in the United States he states: There is no liberal news or conservative news, there's news. And if you announce upfront that you're going to slant it either way, you automatically eliminate a lot of listeners. What Fox has done is announced they're not going to slant it. They're going to be fair and balanced. People can watch them and feel they're getting a fair and balanced account of the news even when they're not. (via Poynter Online) I doubt even Fox news executives believe it when they say they are "fair and balanced." 10:00:36 PM

Microsoft was unvieled MSN Newsbot, its own comprtirtor to Google News. Currently it is aimed at readers in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain. ZD Net reports that one interesting feature is that for users while MSN Passports it will automatically customize the news to providers you have read in the past. 9:48:29 PM

Don't Blame Canada New York state Governor George Pataki should apolgize to Canadians, while his first reaction was to blame Canada for the August blackout, the offical investigation reported it was the fault of FirstEnergy Corp of Ohio. From the New York Times article: the company's failure to adequately trim trees along the lines "was the common cause" for the lines tripping and said overall FirstEnergy "failed to ensure the security of its transmission system." 9:47:45 PM

Wired Magazine looks at the works of noted science-fiction author Phillip K. Dick and the efforts of his heirs to protect his legacy that has gained much attention from Hollywood since his death in 1982 shortly before the first work based on his stories was released. In addition to providing the basis for six movies, a half-dozen more works are in development and many works such as The Matrix, The Truman Show, and Vanilla Sky all deal with the idea of memories and knowing if your reality is in fact real, and what is real anyhow? The article notes that Joel Silver has optioned Time Out of Joint, Dick’s classic 1959 novel but is not currently working on the project. Get to work Joel! 9:46:50 PM